The seventh episode of Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka sees Rapture and War Nurse embark upon a mission in the northern Hokkaido marshlands.

Rapture ready to give in to despair

First up, we get a flashback to the war that the Legendary Magical Five fought in, showing us what Rapture’s state of mind was like after losing as many of their allies as they did. Fortunately, Tamara was able to convince Rapture to stand back up and fight for just one more hour.

M Squad throws a welcome party for Asuka

In the present day, Asuka is welcome to the M Squad with a party. A party with expired rations, though. Actually, turns out the food is better than expected. The members of the M Squad also properly introduce themselves.

Tamara

Attention shifts over to Moscow for a short while, where we see Tamara receiving a mission that will take her to Japan. She is determined to carry it out, for the sake of her sister.

It isn’t long until Asuka and Kurumi have their first mission with M Squad, which takes them to Hokkaido. The Russian mafia hand over four captured Japanese humans to the Disas in exchange for magical weapons, thanks to the opening of a Random Bridge. The anime itself goes into detail about Topology Bridges, but all you really need to know is that they connect two worlds.

War Nurse & Rapture

M Squad arrive after the Russian mafia had completed their trade, so they are not able to save the trafficked humans. They do easily take out most of the Russia mafia, whilst Nazani confronts Rapture and War Nurse. Kasyanov retreats.

Nazani’s magic item lets her use fire magic

Nazani’s fire magic is stopped by Kurumi’s Reactive Magic Shield, but when one of her fireballs incapacitates a member of M Squad, Rapture is brought to an abrupt halt by her PTSD. Fortunately, though, War Nurse is able to get Rapture to snap out of it.

Rapture disarms Nazani

Rapture soundly defeats Nazani by cutting her arm off. They keep her alive, though, as they intend to get information out of her. Seeing everything that happened, Kasyanov decides to get out of their using Disas teleportation pills – at the risk of liquefying his organs.

Kasyanov uses a Disas transformation magic item

Kasyanov finds himself confronted by Tamara. When she attacks, he sees no other option but to use his last resort and transform himself into a Disas. As one might expect, Tamara has a transformation of her own.

Magical Girl Phoenix Tamara

Kasyanov finds himself fighting Phoenix, one of the Legendary Magical Five. He believes he has the upper hand at close range, but Phoenix is prepared for that event. She demonstrates why she is called Phoenix by roasting Kasyanov with her flamethrower, but allows him to live so she can try and get information about the magic item he was carrying. Kasyanov gives nothing away, before committing suicide.

One of Babel Brigade’s leaders, Giess

Finally, we see a brief meeting between two leaders of the Babel Brigade: Leyla and Giess. Leyla hands over an envelope to Giess, and tells him to look after the girl in the photo.

All right, this episode adapted a special chapter to begin with: the one where Asuka tries the military rations. Following that, we got the last part of chapter 11 and all of chapter 12 of the manga which was the fight against the Russian mafia and Tamara’s first appearance.
The last part of this episode, with Giess and Leyla, adapts a small part of chapter 13.

A notable difference between the manga and anime here is Asuka’s PTSD. She took down Nazani with no problems in the manga, but Nazani injured one of her allies in the anime. That resulted in Asuka facing the fear of losing her comrades again.

Overall, this was a pretty good episode. Seeing M Squad in action was enjoyable, and the same goes for Magical Girl Phoenix Tamara. We even got some light-hearted stuff with Asuka’s M Squad welcome party. I enjoyed watching this episode.

Next episode marks the beginning of the Okinawa Arc, where everything that Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka has given us before gets stepped up. The fanservice, the violence, the stakes… well, in the manga at least. Let’s see if the anime follows suit.
Remember back in episode 3 we had Kurumi imagining Asuka in a bikini? That becomes reality in the next episode.